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From: ignatz@chinet.chi.il.us (Dave Ihnat)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,unix-pc.general,comp.sys.att
Subject: Re: Recompiling News 2.11 with dbm routines using gcc1.34
Message-ID: <7976@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 21 Mar 89 00:07:54 GMT
References: <633@icus.islp.ny.us>
Reply-To: ignatz@chinet.chi.il.us (Dave Ihnat)
Followup-To: news.software.b
Distribution: usa
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 25

In article <633@icus.islp.ny.us> lenny@icus.islp.ny.us (Lenny Tropiano) writes:
>...  Going even one step further, adding some
>public domain dbm routines (mdbm), and compiling it ...

Well, Lenny, this has been discussed before, but unless you're an AT&T site,
or a BSD source license site, you really can't use mdbm.  It seems that it was
pretty well decided that the hash functions of dbm were from the original
AT&T sources sent to Berkeley, and the mdbm routines are just a rehash (pardon
the pun) of the original dbm routines.  So, technically--until they release the
code--the hashing part of dbm/mdbm belongs to, and is proprietary code of,
AT&T.  When these routines were posted to the net, this came up and the upshot
was that it's not to be redistributed or used except by such sites, and of
course everyone who has a copy that was posted deleted it. (Uh-huh.)

There was some discussion about re-writing this part of the code--I was
volunteered, but never got time--and another soul mentioned that it had been
distributed in X-windows, which may release it--or at least, release our
responsibility to treat it as proprietary--but no further information ever
surfaced on that, either.

	G'luck,

		Dave Ihnat
		Analysts International Corp.
		ignatz@homebru.chi.il.us